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John Carmack Leaves Meta

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Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#321

Post by dqpb »

hajile wrote: post #29
modeless wrote: post #4

He just founded a new company called Keen Technologies to work on AGI. Not surprising that he wants to focus on that now. He's been part-time at Meta for years. I'm interested to find out what kind of business model he's planning for an AGI company. Edit: he posted his leaving message publicly here: https://www.facebook.com/100006735798590/posts/pfbid0iPixEvP... Additional public comments on Twitter here: https://twi…

I suspect he's going to get smacked hard by the AGI problem and ultimately concede defeat on his biggest goal while achieving some success in the current less-than-general ML stuff.

I believe we're still 15 years out from AGI, but I also think we could start creating autonomous agents right now that make people feel like it's almost AGI. I think Carmack could get something out the door that feels like that.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#322

Post by ryandrake »

Buttons840 wrote: post #283
RJIb8RBYxzAMX9u wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically I felt reassured reading this. "[...] I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after [...] evidence piles up" especially resonates with me. While I rationally understand it's just corporate bureaucracy / politics, sometimes I still wonder if I were just a bit more capable I'd be more persuasive. If John fucking Carmack cannot move the bureau…

Yeah. I feel like this a lot. I don't know if it's a bias of some kind but it feels right. I suppose it's selection bias. I don't know how to market, but apparently the marketing people do because we have customers. I do know about my corner of the system though, and when my advice is ignored it usually turns out I was right in the end.

At MegaCompanies, being right, having evidence, and trying to persuade just isn’t enough, as John Fucking Carmack figured out. It’s more like High School. You need to be in the right clique or have the ear of the right Very Important Person.

When you send that E-mail and say “We should do X because Y and Z…” people stop reading at “because” and just go look in the company directory for your name. If you’re high enough on the totem pole, they’ll respond to you. If you’re even higher, they might suggest a meeting to discuss X! And if you are really high up, they will stop what they are doing and do X right away.

What’s surprising to me is how someone like Carmack didn’t have enough totem-pole clout just from who he is! He’s practically a celebrity, and I’d have thought that would go a long way in the High School Drama Club but I guess not.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#323

Post by jbverschoor »

baby wrote: post #206
Blue111 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FB culture is way too positive and happy oh wow.. never thought they could be happy at FB

Didn’t they win best place to work at many years ago?

For people who did a programming workshop maybe?

I guess they don’t value x1000 talent

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#324

Post by kernal »

Arjuna wrote: post #111

”It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I'm evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I…

>It is simply stunning that the seasoned direction and counsel that someone of John Carmack’s caliber is capable of delivering was not being followed.

He worked for an Ad company that voraciously mined through their user's data. Unless he was able to find new ways to monetize their users or bypass iOS's opt in app tracking, I see no reason why they would even care.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#325

Post by jauer »

dmix wrote: post #189
mathgladiator wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He isn't alone. A core problem is that FB culture is way too positive and happy, and hard criticism is received poorly. The politics to get anything done if your name isn't Mark is borderline impossible. I left a year ago, and I've become beyond happy.

Is this a classic middle management malaise where everyone gets paid so well they don’t want to stir the pot? The bureaucracy and protection of today’s money cows which only clouds them from seeing tomorrow’s cows that will rescue them from certain obscurity? The Clayton M Christensen solution to big companies ignoring obvious problems is to have isolated small teams “infrapreneurship” who aren’t under the pressures…

Part of the problem is that Oculus has all the overhead from Meta’s regulatory compliance burden, so they can’t escape some of the most frustrating pressures.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#326

Post by SoftTalker »

blululu wrote: post #280
Blue111 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FB culture is way too positive and happy oh wow.. never thought they could be happy at FB

Never worked there, but from everything I have observed, the free lunches, full medical/dental/vision and high six figure salaries generally imbue people with a sense of well being. The nice offices and decent working hours also help. The trip is that Facebook also has some mission driven stuff about making the world a bit nicer that some people really buy into. It's a good mission too and a lot of people really do e…

> mission driven stuff about making the world a bit nicer

That instantly becomes political because not everyone agrees on what "nicer" is.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#327

Post by modeless »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #302
modeless wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's less of a judgement about VR and more of a judgement about AI. If you believe AGI is within reach (as he does and I agree), working on literally anything else seems like a waste of time. It's impossible to overstate the impact it will have.

Wouldn't be surprised if SD, GPT-3, and other recent releases were what pushed him over the edge and prompted him to leave. He must have felt like he was watching a lot of cool things happen without him. If I had another 30 IQ points I'd be climbing over walls and sneaking into buildings at night to work on this stuff.

I believe he talked about starting work on AGI at the time he went part-time at Meta, long before GPT-3.

I encourage anyone to try out some AI related stuff, genius IQ not required. It's still a young field so there aren't yet huge towers of knowledge to climb before you can do anything. The core ideas are actually super simple, requiring nothing more than high school math.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#328

Post by woeirua »

lovecg wrote: post #320
methodical wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "If you solve a few more problems" The amount of work done by these 7 words is incredible. ChatGPT is far from changing a "lot" of industries. Still pathetic at programming (which isn't its purpose, but is AlphaCode's purpose; which also sucks), use of it for copy writing is nullified since it seems Google will crack down on AI generated copy writing. DALL-E is also a nice party trick but far from being particularl…

It boggles my mind that people are now dismissive towards technology that would have been literal science fiction _a year ago_ while at the same time being pessimistic about future progress.

The world is full of compelling tech demos that fail to make much of a splash.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#329

Post by gregw2 »

3836293648 wrote: post #22
this_user wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He seemed to be focused on latency and scale, where Meta seems to be pivoting to fidelity and graphics. Which makes sense, you want your users to be able to really take in the graphical glory of the Metaverse.

Sure, but it's VR. Not making people sick (= low latency) needs to come first

Agreed.

I liked Quest2. It gave me noticeable mental fatigue/wore me out the first couple half hours I used it but it’s bothered me less since. I think the graphics qualify and UI is ‘good enough’ for the platform/tech to maintain and grow traction. But some family members found it disorienting on first try and never wanted to mess with it again. That does limit the market. And it probably is the biggest issue as you say.

I noticed three other constraints that were inhibiting success: 1) Not a lot of free fun mindless apps. The platform seems to really steer you to $30 apps as its business model. I respect that, would rather pay up front than be the product, but it limits adoption/addiction/stickiness. (Of course with Meta you might end up being both.) Never had patience to venture into the side loading world. 2) Kids under 13 are not supposed to use it. Not sure why but I believe it may have interfere with visual development (and I believe it), and I limited my kids use significantly. This limits the kid adoption/addiction/stickiness dynamic seen with, say, YouTube. 3) Creep factor. Your every move is tied to your real Facebook name. I was always conscious my every move and sight was visible to Facebook. It’s true you are tracked/with the web/internet but in a less direct way. I suspect, but don’t know that this inhibits people using it for porn, which also limits adoption/addictiveness/stickiness.

Beyond those three, two more thoughts…

As many have discussed, I’m not sure what the killer app is, but a bit to my surprise I’m not sure it is critical… There were a number of fun different unique experiences (Beat Saber, etc) so I think it may work out without one big one.

I also found that casting the screen to Chrome didn’t work a lot of the time which limited my family’s ability to enjoy it together and help each other.

Re: John Carmack Leaves Meta

#330

Post by SoftTalker »

xyzelement wrote: post #290
dcow wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a genuine question about what to do when one finds oneself in this type of position and one is surrounded by people who seemingly do give a damn (and one isn't compelled to just give up and leave). In my experience, the software industry, in it’s aggressive desire to be egalitarian, has an authority problem. I have encountered the “I told you so one year ago but we just had to learn the hard way didn't we” sit…

I want to write about this topic in more depth, but in a nutshell I found that the more innovative and valuable your idea is, the harder it is to sell (because it's very value comes from the fact that it's a distance from bow people are thinking today) People are busy and attention is scarce so knowing how to genuinely push and sell your idea in such environments is a rare ability and one that needs curation. You'll…

You also have to be ruthless as required and not take no for an answer. Sometimes you have to run people over and leave the bodies in the ditch to get stuff done.
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